Ahoy, Fellow Cruciverbalists! Welcome to Week 22 of my crossword contest. If you’re new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

I received a record 111 entries to last week’s puzzle, though only 65 of them contained the correct contest answer phrase, NOBLE GASES. The two components of this phrase were found at 47-down and 1-across, and described the five theme entries in the puzzle: ROBIN DUKE, COUNT CHOCULA, SACHA BARON COHEN, MY NAME IS EARL, and the late great TED KNIGHT. Each of these is a funny person/character/TV show — in other words, a “gas” — and each contains a rank of nobility.

Two other popular answers were NOBLE PACK (22 entries) and NOBLE ILK (18 entries). Although I did once in the past allow a second answer to be counted correct (see Week 7), I didn’t feel it was quite justified here. Though PACK and ILK do describe a group, they didn’t capture the fun/funny aspect of GASES and the five theme entries, and neither NOBLE ILK nor NOBLE PACK is a recognizable phrase as NOBLE GASES is.

This week’s winner, whose name was chosen randomly from among the 65 correct entries, is Marcia Sander of Port Washington, N.Y. Marcia will receive as her prize a subscription to Peter Gordon’s post-Sun crossword service.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer phrase is a band who has sold tens of millions of albums, and who would’ve made an appropriate sixth theme entry in this puzzle if I’d been able to squeeze them in. Hint: they’re listed on this wikipedia page. E-mail this band’s name to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer phrase in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit “print” on your browser. To solve using Across Lite, join the Google Group here:

http://groups.google.com/group/mgwcc

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.